Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia

FBI chief defends use of informants in mosques

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert MuellerFBI Director Robert Mueller on Monday defended the agency’s use of informants within U.S. mosques, despite complaints from Muslim organizations that worshippers and clerics are being targeted instead of possible terrorists.

Mueller’s comments came just days after a Michigan Muslim organization asked the Justice Department to investigate complaints that the FBI is asking the faithful to spy on Islamic leaders and worshippers. Similar alarm followed the disclosure earlier this year that the FBI planted a spy in Southern California mosques.

“We don’t investigate places, we investigate individuals,” Mueller said during a brief meeting with reporters in Los Angeles. “To the extent that there may be evidence or other information of criminal wrongdoings, then we will … undertake those investigations,” Mueller added. “We will continue to do it.”

He called relations with U.S. Muslims “very good,” but acknowledged disagreements without providing specifics.

The Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after mosques and other groups reported members of the community have been asked to monitor people coming to mosques and donations they make. The FBI’s Detroit office has denied the allegations.

In the California case, information about the informant who spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine came out at a February detention hearing for a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard, an Afghan native and naturalized U.S. citizen named Ahmadullah Niazi who is accused of lying on his citizenship and passport applications about terrorism ties.

Local Muslim leaders say they suspected since at least since 2006 that the FBI was trying to infiltrate Muslim organizations in the area.

“History disputes Mr. Mueller’s statements, at least in Southern California,” said Shakeel Syed, executive of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. “It doesn’t alleviate anything. It only continues to show the sheer arrogance demonstrated by the bureau in holding Muslim community members, clerics, mosques, as suspects,” Syed said. He is among community leaders in court seeking government records of surveillance.

FBI agents and prosecutors say spying on mosques is one of the best weapons to uncover lurking terrorists or threats to national security, but it has posed a politically and legally thorny issue with Muslims who see themselves as unjustly monitored. “The FBI needs to do what it needs to do, certainly,” Syed said. But the agency is “trying to incite and entrap” law-abiding people.

Mueller also said that there will be no change in the FBI’s priorities in the new administration. “I would not expect that we would in any way take our foot off the pedal of addressing counterterrorism,” he said.

“My expectation is that we’ll see an uptick in terms of resources devoted toward our domestic criminal responsibilities, but we will not … relax our responsibilities when it come to counterterrorism or counterintelligence,” he added.

Associated Press, 8 June 2009

Quilliam and the ‘Muslim world’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The reality is that, despite the paranoia of the Quilliam Foundation, ‘Muslim world’ is not a phrase conceived exclusively by radical Islamists for nefarious propaganda purposes, which we have then been duped and deceived into using. Nor is it a phrase without real meaning, purpose or import. On the contrary, in a world of multiple identities, both individual and collective, to refer to the Muslim world is to simplify, clarify and identify.

“As someone who has often used the phrase ‘Muslim world’ myself, I take great personal offence in now being told by Ed Husain and his patronising thinktank chums that I for one am bolstering the repulsive and divisive ‘al-Qaeda narrative’ by doing so. ‘Muslim world’ is a perfectly valid, alternative description of the ‘Muslim majority countries’ and ‘Muslim communities’ so beloved by the Quilliam Foundation, and not an Islamist conspiracy theory in any shape or form.

“There is also an element of hypocrisy in this latest Quilliam position, as there are numerous references to the ‘Muslim world’ on its own website from, among others, its director Maajid Nawaz. Did he not get the memo?”

Mehdi Hasan at Comment is Free, 7 June 2009

MCB statement on BNP’s election to European Parliament

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MCB Alarmed Over Neo-Nazi victory

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) today joined other British people in voicing their alarm and concern as the British National Party (BNP) gained its first two seats in the European parliament. This is a party that has a history of whipping up hatred against black people, Asians, Jews, Muslims and immigrants and has described Islam as “a vicious, wicked faith”.

Unlike other European countries, the UK has, in the past, prided itself in refusing to send MEPs who belonged to the far-right. Today we have reached a sad and historic milestone where we can no longer claim that racism has no place on our political landscape.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain said: “This is a sad day for British politics. The news of the election of far-right MEPs comes at a time when we mark the 65th anniversary of D-Day, celebrating the heroism of those who fought the same hatred and fascism and racism we are witnessing today”.

“They now have a platform and taxpayer resources to perpetuate hate. They now have the ability to join racists and fascists in continental Europe to create a coalition of racists and Islamophobes. I call on all mainstream parties, and all British people, Muslims included, to come together to ensure we challenge the far right. We must ensure that this is a mere blip, and not a milestone, in British politics”.

MCB press release, 8 June 2009

Sharia law ‘same as Krays’, says Tebbit

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Semi house trained polecatVeteran Tory Lord Tebbit provoked anger among Muslims yesterday by comparing Islamic sharia courts to gangsters. He likened the tribunals to the “system of arbitration of disputes that was run by the Kray brothers”.

The intervention from Lord Tebbit, the former Tory chairman and cabinet minister whose leading role in the Thatcher years has made him a revered figure for many in the party, reignited the row over Islamic courts and their role in the British justice system.

His comparison with the intimidation and violence used by the Krays to run their gangland empire brought an angry response.

Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “We can only wonder whether Lord Tebbit has ever set foot in a sharia council to see what they actually do before making such a baseless and ignorant comparison with the workings of the Kray brothers.

“Both Muslim sharia councils and Orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts exist to try and help resolve civil disputes amongst individuals through a voluntary process of arbitration. They are entirely legal and have to operate firmly within the law.”

Daily Mail, 5 June 2009

You’ll note that the Mail is incapable of reporting such issues without including some baseless reference to Muslim “anger”. So Inayat Bunglawala’s reasoned remarks have to be described as “an angry response”.

Although, to be fair, the Mail did at least make the effort to contact a representative figure from the Muslim community and ask for a comment, which is more than you can say for the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and the Sun.

Update:  See ENGAGE, 5 June 2009

American right scorns Barack Obama’s speech to Muslim world

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The American right scorned Barack Obama’s speech today, saying he had apologised for past American actions while failing to hold Arab and Islamic countries accountable for the words and actions of ­violent extremists.

US conservatives lashed out at the president for opening with a Muslim greeting in ­Arabic, for omitting to mention what they described as American successes in Iraq, and for exaggerating the number of Muslims living in the US.

While Republican party leaders were largely silent Thursday morning, conservative commentators and former Republican aides caricatured Obama as weak and insufficiently strident in his support for Israel.

“President Bush would never have criticised our military or our intelligence community on foreign soil,” a former Bush speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, said on Fox News. “He basically threw our military under the bus in front of a Muslim audience.”

Guardian, 4 June 2009

See also Media Matters for America, 4 June 2009

Resisting extremism in Luton

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Anti-Al-Muhajiroun-protest2Farasat Latif was taking his daughter to school when he found out that the mosque he ran in Luton had been firebombed by right-wing extremists.

In the middle of the night two men in a stolen silver BMW had driven up to the Masjid Al Ghurabaa in the Bury Park area and poured petrol through a side window before making their getaway.

The anger that Mr Latif felt following that fire on 4 May could have been directed solely at the bigots who set his mosque alight. But the people he was most furious with were a motley collection of 15 to 20 young men who regularly preached a radical and intolerant brand of Islam from a street stall down the road and had helped foster the image that Luton was an Islamist stronghold.

Two weeks earlier those same men – most of whom are former members of the banned Islamist group Al Muhajiroun – had greeted soldiers of the Royal Anglian regiment who were returning from Iraq with screams of abuse and placards declaring them “Butchers of Basra”, “murderers” and “baby-killers”.

The protest outraged whole swaths of Britain, not least Luton’s 25,000 Muslims who knew all too well that their town would once again be associated with extremism.

Once the Masjid Al Ghurabaa was firebombed, in what police suspect was a retaliatory hate attack, Mr Latif sadly concluded that Luton’s ordinary Muslims were paying the price for the actions of the “Al Muhajiroun boys”. Which is why he decided to act against them. Shortly after Friday prayers last week he and 300 supporters marched down to Dunstable Road where the sect often set up their stall and told them in no uncertain terms that they were no longer welcome in Luton.

Mr Latif hopes that their decision to turn on the extremists within their own community will now prompt Luton’s white community to do the same. “I believe people on all sides are sick of the extremists,” he said. “I now hope the white working class will weed out the fascists and hate mongers just like we now have. Otherwise things will only get worse.”

Independent, 3 June 2009

Read Islamic Centre statement (pdf) here.